Manny’s Chophouse

Words that come to mind to describe Manny’s Chophouse are raucous, loud, crazy busy and excellent value. (An update follows at the end of this review)

On Wednesday nights they offer two-fers on their well known fajitas, and from 4:00 pm until around 7:30, the place is nuts. They actually had an employee in the parking lot directing traffic there were so many cars and pickups trying to get in and out at the same time. Wait times, even after phoning ahead, were in the order of 45 minutes.

The menu is complete with a good assortment of starters, fresh seafood, chicken, and their famous steaks, chops and ribs.

Prices are quite good, substantiating their claim to good value.

All main dishes come with an unlimited salad bowl, mixed at your table. The salad tasted good with a rich, garlicky dressing and lots of ingredients. From it, I had the taste in my mouth that was reminiscent of the salad-in-a-bag you purchase at the food market. Not a bad taste, just not quite fresh, I thought. My partner loved the pickled peppers hidden in the salad. I did not. I thought they were spicy, my partner thought not. I’m a wuss!

The hot, restaurant-baked rolls were absolutely delicious as was the whipped cinnamon butter. It would have been nice to have one container of just whipped butter and the other of cinnamon butter rather than two of cinnamon butter. And, a side plate upon which each person could put down their rolls would have been nice.

It’s a steakhouse, so I had the Manny’s Sirloin – requested medium rare. It arrived rare (cold and undone in the middle), but was close enough to what was ordered and was so well priced I didn’t fuss. The Chophouse Fries were simply institutional french fries. Both the steak and fries arrived at the table steaming hot, which made the fries palatable.

Update: Well folks, we had family in from out of town, and wanted to treat them to a special dining experience, so we visited Manny’s with them during their holiday in Florida.

Unfortunately, and for reasons beyond our ken, the wheels fell off at Manny’s.

While there were substantially fewer guests than our first visit, we waited longer, almost 90 minutes all told. When finally seated, the service was slow, the warm buns weren’t, the soft drink had no syrup, don’t ever order the onion rings as they are inedible (and took 15 minutes to arrive), and so on and so on. After almost 40 minutes we had had enough and we told our server and the manager that we were leaving. An altogether horrible dining experience. So that’s our last visit to Manny’s. We sure hope your visit goes better if you decide to eat there. We will not as, as there are plenty of other restaurants in the greater Orlando area to eat at, and we’ll not waste another visit to Manny’s.